- From: Henrik Dvergsdal <henrik.dvergsdal@hibo.no>
- Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 09:54:10 +0200
- To: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
On 4 Jun 2007, at 01:56, Magnus Kristiansen wrote: >> And finally: Why must the <base> element occur only "In a head >> element, after the meta element with the charset attribute, if >> any, but before any other elements"? Does the sequencing of the >> elements in <head> really matter? > > UAs will naturally have to handle other orderings, but the sequence > given above is the optimal one. The charset is first, so as few > bytes as possible have to be parsed twice. Base is next, because it > affects the location of external resources like stylesheets and > scripts. By getting the base as soon as possible, there are no > chances of having to restart a fetch, or having to delay fetching > until you're sure you have the final address. OK. I can see that the current sequence is optimal for UA's. But if this is the only reason, I think its time to apply the "users over authors over implementors ..." design principle and simplify the spec. The gain must be absolutely minimal: What is the actual real time delay caused by parsing the entire <head> before one starts fetching? What's the actual cost in terms of CPU time of parsing the <head> twice? Since this change made it through the scrutiny of the WHATWG, there must be a better use case (with research) than this. -- Henrik Dvergsdal
Received on Monday, 4 June 2007 07:54:28 UTC